


On Falling

by emmbrancsxx0



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, a recipe for disaster if you ask me, i always wondered about why all the rebel angels were put in the same garrison, idk if i like this but it's been rattling around in my head, sounds like someone majorly fucked up tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 06:07:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18309719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmbrancsxx0/pseuds/emmbrancsxx0
Summary: He had fallen, further and faster than any angel before him.





	On Falling

First, there was Lucifer.

Castiel remembered it well, when Lucifer fell. When he betrayed God and forsook heaven. It started a war that raged for millennia, that put their Father’s creations in the middle of it, that led to words like _devil_ and _satan_ and _evil_. Evil. It’s what the other angels whispered; the word was like a weapon Castiel’s garrison used to justify the carnage. Lucifer was evil because he didn’t follow their Father’s orders. Castiel believed it, too. 

But sometimes, he wondered what it was like to rebel. He would never find out. He would never fall.

Next, there was Gabriel.

He hadn’t been a part of Castiel’s garrison, but he was their leader, in a way. Their general. He had many garrisons under his command, and every century or so he would check in with Castiel’s flight. Castiel had admired his brother, his grace like a supernova and wings as wide as the galaxy. That was, of course, until Gabriel stopped checking in and Raphael took on his duties. There were rumors after that; they said Gabriel had left, had disappeared, had run away, had given into his doubts. It wasn’t an evil act, as Lucifer’s had been. After all, their Father had left, too. They’d be back. Eventually. There was no need to lose faith.

But they never did return, and Castiel did his best not to show that he, too, had doubts. He would never voice them. He would never fall.

Then, there was Anna.

She thought she had been doing it out of love of humanity, but she was wrong. How was she to know? Angels don’t love. It would be easy to mistake another emotion for it. Anna had ripped out her grace because she envied the humans. She envied their pain and joy, their fleeting lives and imagination. Their ability to dream. After she left, Castiel took her place as commander of the garrison. At first, he pretended like he didn’t think of her constantly, and that he didn’t envy her in return; and over time, he stopped thinking of her altogether. She’d abandoned them—him. 

But, in truth, he understood. He knew what it was like to dream of something more. He would keep his longings to himself. He would never fall.

Balthazar came next. 

For a long time, Castiel had assumed him dead, but his brother was alive. He, like Gabriel, had left heaven, but not because of doubt. He left for freedom. He did not allow his wings to be caged by an endless war or his grace to be shackled by duty. He wanted decadence, fun, to be his own man. He wanted to pick and choose from humanity’s world as if gorging himself at a buffet. He wanted to do what he desired, to go wherever he saw fit. He did not want heaven to choose for him.

Before Castiel ever knew any of this, he too had watched their charges on earth and marveled at their free will. He felt the tug of it at his center, right where a heart might be. But freedom was not for angels. He would never experience it. He would never fall.

Then, Uriel.

He had betrayed the host out of loyalty. In any other circumstance, that was a trait all angels needed to have. Loyalty and submission. However, Uriel bowed to another god. He believed Lucifer’s lies about the humans, in the angels’ superiority. He had given up on heaven’s plan, on divine will. He had let hatred overcome him; he turned his back on his family. He chose to fight against them.

By that time, Castiel had begun to question his own loyalties. Certain thoughts infested him with more frequency as of late. They weeded their way into his mind unannounced, and sometimes they felt like a revelation. Maybe there could be another to pledge his allegiance to. He thought, maybe, he was falling.

Later, Castiel had learned of Ishim’s crimes.

Like Anna, he thought he was doing it for love, but it was obsession. He let it rule him, let it decide his actions. His intentions were never pure, and he saw his emotions as a weakness. Castiel did not think that Ishim wanted such things to happen, but once an angel grew a heart, there was no going back. Castiel knew that now. He’d known it for years.

But, unlike Ishim, Castiel also knew love. He had fallen, further and faster than any angel before him. He had rebelled. He had trusted his doubts to the calloused hands of a hunter. He had dreamed that maybe something could grow between them. He had fought for freedom at his side. He had given his loyalties to that righteous man, and continues to do so every hour of every mortal day. 

He is still falling, after all this time, as if he had perfected the act. He had fallen so unlike the others before him.

Castiel did not know if that was of his own doing, or if it was part of God’s plan. He did not know why all the rebel angels were so closely linked, many of them fighting alongside each other in the same garrison. Had they been put together on purpose, all the broken and fractured and damaged beings? Or had it been mere happenstance? Had they all fed off one another, whispering their ideas in subtleties and wordlessly strengthening each other’s wayward spirits? Had the idea started with one and trickled to the others like water in a brook? Or had they all been made with such wild free thought? 

He did not know. It didn’t matter. He had fallen. He always had been, but one human had hastened his descent.

And now Castiel fell in other ways—into soft lips, into warm beds, into sheltering arms, into green eyes. Into love. 

Castiel didn’t mind falling. He had something the others did not.

He had someone to catch him.


End file.
